


His mother's son

by MissGryffindor



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 17:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13171353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissGryffindor/pseuds/MissGryffindor
Summary: In which Ned returns to Winterfell with his bastard son, but Nan isn’t buying the story that Ned is telling everyone.





	His mother's son

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a theory a friend had that Old Nan wizened up to Ned not being Jon's father pretty quickly.

She knows as soon as she sees the babe, swaddled in a blanket picked up somewhere in the south, cosy and comfortable in the southron wet-nurse’s arms. 

Lord Eddard – she must remember that the solemn young boy she recalls from the days before he left for the Eyrie is her liege lord now – has said that the boy is his natural son, and will be raised at Winterfell. He tells Nan, and the rest of the staff, that the Lady Catelyn will arrive soon with their son and heir. 

Nan knows he means for the boys to be raised together, though he does not say so explicitly; she also knows that the boys will not be half-brothers, but cousins. 

Nan nods back at Lord Eddard when he asks her to help the wet-nurse, and to ensure that she has everything she needs; Nan has been at Winterfell longer than anyone else in the castle, and he tells her that if anyone knows what is needed, it is her. She smiles at that – and at the sight of the babe, so like his mother. 

Brandon would have known, but she isn’t sure that Benjen will. As the youngest, he was the one they all saw as a babe, not the other way around. Perhaps when the child is older, if the likeness continues, but not now. No, he may suspect for other reasons; but he will not know as Nan does. 

She asks the wet-nurse about the journey north, and the state of the south following a year of war. The girl answers her questions, and Nan learns that she is from King’s Landing – hired by Lord Eddard and a short, odd-looking man. There was another wet-nurse, but she only met her the once, to answer some questions about the babe’s habits. The girl says she thinks the other one was Dornish, but isn’t sure. Until she came to Winterfell, she had never left King’s Landing. 

She asks Nan about northern winters, and Nan tries to reassure her. She asks about the babe – Jon, Lord Eddard has named him. Nan thinks back, recalling King Jon Stark and the stories she told this babe’s mother about the king. Likely, however, this child has not been named for some long-dead Stark, but for Lord Arryn of the Eyrie. It is fitting, Nan muses, that Lord Eddard has named his surrogate son for his surrogate father; the man who protected him from King Aerys as he will now presumably protect this babe from King Robert. 

Once Nan has shown her the chambers Lord Eddard has decreed will be set aside for the babe and his wet-nurse, she asks to hold him. The wet-nurse hands him over gently, muttering that her own babe – left in the south with her mother and young sister – was far greedier and far noisier than little Jon Snow. 

This babe is quiet, and Nan thinks that his temperament is not like his mother’s. As Nan looks down at Jon Snow, she sees his mother more and more; his eyes; his mouth; his nose. Perhaps he will get his temperament from his father, for he has inherited his looks from his mother alone. 

She recalls the day that Lady Lyarra took to her bed to birth Lady Lyanna, and how hard the birth had been on her. She recalls helping her in the days after, holding and cooing over the tempestuous baby girl who refused to sleep and seemed to scream from dusk till dawn, and constantly tried to fight her way out from under her blankets. 

The wet-nurse wishes to rest – it has been a long journey from the south, and Nan can tell that she misses her own babe terribly, but most likely could not turn down the money Lord Eddard offered her to come north – and so Nan offers to take Jon for a walk. 

She takes him along the passage to her own room, this curious and quiet child, and tells him things that she knows it is safe to whisper now, but which she will likely be prevented from telling him in the future. 

She tells him of a sweet, loving, wild girl who was half-horse and adventurous and brave; she tells him of a girl that looks exactly like him, who grew up the pride of the North, a girl that men would start wars for; she tells him of a girl beloved by her brothers and the apple of her father’s eyes; she tells him of a girl that listened, wide-eyed to the stories she told; she tells him that he is loved, that he will always be loved, for that girl would love him more than life itself were she here and not with the gods and her parents and eldest brother. 

When Nan returns the babe to his wet-nurse, crying for his feed, she stays and sits with them. She tells the wet-nurse that she came to Winterfell to fulfil the same task, and stayed. She tells her of the sons that went off to fight in the war and never returned. They speak of their babes, and of the babe between them. 

Nan assures the girl that Lord Eddard is a good man, who will not be a harsh master. He is solemn and unsmiling, but not without feeling. The girl tells Nan that Lord Eddard is fond of the babe. He spent time with him every day on the journey north, and would not retire to sleep without asking her opinion on how the babe was getting on. Bastard or not, the girl tells her, the babe – Jon – is loved. 

After the feed, Nan leaves them be. She walks down to the kitchens to make a pot of tea, and hears the kitchen maids talking about the babe. Nan is asked how he looks, and replies that he has inherited the Stark face; that he is a true child of the North. She asks about the internment of the Lady Lyanna’s bones, brought North with Lord Eddard. 

One of the kitchen maids – who had been of an age with Lyanna and played with her from time to time as a small child – sniffles, and says that they hear Lord Eddard will have her bones placed in the tomb in the next day or so. Lady Lyanna was a favourite with all at Winterfell, and Nan hopes that in time her son will be too. 

Two days later, Nan is there in the crypts with Lord Eddard, Benjen and a few of the household who had served Lady Lyanna, as her bones are interred in the tomb built years before. Lord Eddard speaks haltingly of the statue he has commissioned of his sister and brother, breaking with the tradition that said only Kings in the North and the Lords of Winterfell that followed would be so honoured. 

Nan thinks that Lady Lyanna would have liked that. Her favourite stories had always been of maidens honoured by their menfolk, and the adventures they had in spite of them. Lady Lyanna’s life had been too much of an adventure, Nan thinks. 

That night, as she is returning to her chambers from a visit to her great-grandson in the stables, Nan sees Lord Eddard slip in the entrance to the crypts, the babe Jon Snow in his arms. She thinks it fitting that the babe is taken to say farewell to a mother he will never meet. Jon Snow will not know for many years to come who his mother is, but Nan does.


End file.
